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CHAPTER 20 :The First Fight
publish date:
2026-05-19 17:15:08
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Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 38: The Confession
Adrian Voss had built his entire life on knowing what to say and when — and standing in Ethan's doorway facing Alina Carter, he had nothing. She had not expected him to come in person. Wren's two o'clock call had covered the operational details — timeline, documentation, what each of them needed to do in the next forty-eight hours — and she had been sitting with Ethan afterward, processing it, when the knock came at the door. Ethan opened it. They looked at each other — Adrian Voss and Ethan Cole, the two people most invested in Alina's outcome standing on opposite sides of a doorframe for the first time since a midnight check and a mutual unspoken understanding that they were now, whether they liked it or not, on the same side. Ethan stepped back. "I'll make tea," he said. And disappeared with the particular tact of someone who understood exactly when a room needed to be emptied. Adrian came in. He looked at the flat — the sofa, the film poster, the plant. The gap between this an
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 37:His Voice on the Phone
He didn't ask where she was going. He said her name, and it was enough to stop her feet from moving. She had been at Ethan's for two days. Two days of sleeping on his sofa, which was too short for her by four inches and which she had slept on enough times in her life that her body simply adapted. Two days of Ethan making food she didn't ask for and not asking the questions he was clearly thinking, which was its own form of love. Two days of checking her phone more than she had in months and telling herself she was checking for news from James Wren. She was in the middle of her second morning — coffee in her hand , Ethan's laptop, and a document from Wren she was meant to review — when her phone rang. Adrian. She stared at his name on the screen for three rings. She answered on the fourth. "Are you alright?" was the first thing he said. "I'm fine. Ethan's sofa is short but I'm fine." A pause. She could hear him exhale slightly — not dramatically, just the small release of a brea
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 36 :Running
Alina had spent six months learning how to stay — and now she had exactly forty minutes to learn how to leave. Not from fear. Not because Marcus had frightened her into it — she had sat with that possibility on the drive back and examined it cleanly and decided it was not what was happening. She was leaving because James Wren had called an emergency meeting that evening and the first thing he had said when they all sat down was: we are ready. We move in seventy-two hours. And the second thing he had said was: Alina, for your safety and the integrity of the case, I need you out of the penthouse tonight. Legal reasons. Clean lines. The integrity of the witness position. She understood it. She still sat in her room for ten minutes after Adrian had explained it before she started packing. He stood in her doorway. "You don't have to rush," he said. "Take everything." "I don't need everything." She opened the wardrobe. She got her suitcase down. "I came with one bag. I can leave with
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 35 :Danger in the Room
Marcus Hale had always been the most composed person in every room — and standing across from Alina Carter, watching her connect the final dots, he finally wasn't. She had not planned the confrontation. It happened the way the worst things happen — not dramatically, not at a moment of readiness, but on a Tuesday afternoon when she was collecting her things from Adrian's office because she'd left her laptop charger there the day before. Adrian was at a meeting across town. She had texted to say she was coming in. She had not thought to specify to whom. Marcus was at Adrian's desk. Not using it — standing beside it, papers in hand, with the comfortable authority of a man who had been navigating this office for nine years and had never been required to justify his presence in it. He looked up when she came in. His expression did the thing — the one second, the recalibration, then the warmth arriving like a door opening. "Alina." Easy. Warm. "I didn't know you were coming in." "Quic
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 34 :The Truth About Marcus
Trust, Alina had learned, was not simply given or withheld — it was constructed, piece by piece, and the person who built it for you had decided exactly how fragile to make it. She had been in the study with Adrian for two hours. Not for any arranged reason — she had come in with a question about the legal timeline and he had shown her something on his laptop and the question had expanded into a conversation and the conversation had expanded into the two of them going through James Wren's documentation together, side by side, in the way of people who had stopped needing to explain why they were in the same room. She was learning the full shape of Marcus Hale. Not the surface Marcus — warm, efficient, trusted — but the architecture underneath. The nine years of careful accumulation. The access he had cultivated to Adrian's communication channels, his decision-making processes, his information streams. The way he had managed what Adrian saw and what he didn't. "This section," she sa
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 33: Ethan Finds Out
Ethan had always known something was wrong. What he hadn't known — what he had been carefully not knowing, in the way of someone who loves a person enough to let them have their secrets until they're ready — was that he was part of why. He came to the penthouse the morning after. He came because Alina had called him and said come over and he could hear in the flatness of her voice that it wasn't a request. He came with coffee and his jacket still half on and the energy of someone who had been awake since the night before trying to work out what had happened. He sat at the kitchen counter. He looked at her. "Tell me," he said. She told him. All of it this time — not the managed version, not the partial version she had been giving him in careful portions to keep him from doing something rash. The full version: the photograph, the contract, the deal from three years ago, James Wren's folder, Marcus's memo, Gerald Frost, the message. All of it, in order, from the eviction notice to th
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